


Burn

by Edonohana



Category: Original Work
Genre: Clothed Sex, F/F, Identity Porn, marking/bruising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 16:02:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12062355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: The revolutionary hides her face to conceal her identity. The princess silences her voice to preserve her purity. They know each other. And they don't...





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



> Contains dubiously dubious consent, depending on how you define that, involving power imbalances, hidden identities, and various "it's complicated" issues.

**Sometimes I dream I have no mouth.**

I have a body like a doll, without lips or organs or any openings at all. In the dream I know that I was not born that way, but was altered to refine me into a perfect princess. It makes sense. If my voice is too pure and precious to be heard by commoners, if even receiving it in their ears would defile it, why not take it away entirely? Why not take away every part of myself that is too pure and precious to be touched?

Last night I had that dream. I woke up sweating. The room was dark and hot and still. I could have rung the bell to summon a handmaiden to fan me and sponge my face and wrists with cool water. But to sign my desires, I would have required light for them to see. I lay amongst my smothering silks in a sticky sprawl of limbs, unmoving as that lipless doll, and summoned no one.

I confess this only to you, the paper that can accept my royal words without soiling them: I was afraid that if a candle was lit, it would reveal that the dream was true. That my mouth was gone. That my golden cleft and pearl were gone. Everything, wiped smooth and clean. Perfect.

Today I was given a new handmaiden. One of my old ones had left, apparently; I had not noticed. One of the present handmaidens mentioned that when she brought the new one to me, explaining that she was the replacement for Selan. I had no idea which one Selan was. Had been.

The new handmaiden speaks in the same gentle murmur of all the handmaidens, as they are trained to speak. But I am sure her true voice is different. 

She has very bright eyes. They are intent as the eyes of a cat staring at a feather on a string. She trembled slightly as she watched my fingers, but it did not seem to be in fear of my displeasure. Rather, she trembled as the cat trembles, readying to pounce.

No doubt that intensity will fade with time, as she grows more used to reading the royal signs. 

I shall be sorry when it does. It is pleasant to see. I always enjoyed teasing kittens with bits of string and strips of paper, and watching their muscles grow taut and ready beneath their soft fur.

The handmaiden’s face is a triangle, with sharp cheekbones and narrow eyes and a jawline like an arrowhead. A commoner’s face. She is no full-moon beauty like the one I see in the mirror, with my round face and eyes and cheeks. 

I suppose her body is quite thin as well, a waning crescent moon. I cannot be sure, though, for it was concealed within her flowing robes. Only her hands were bare, and her ankles, and, when she turned, the nape of her neck. 

Her hair was twisted up, of course. All of them have their hair in a twist. But the line where her hair ended and her skin began caught my attention. Her hair was very black, and her skin was very smooth. If I put my finger to that waiting flesh, it might dent like a silken pillow. 

As I think upon the slight plumpness of her neck, it occurs to me that she might not be a waning crescent beneath the robes. Maybe she is a waxing crescent. Or even a waning gibbous moon. 

I must remember to ask her name.

 

**I don’t know why I bother to write.**

Not when I have to do it sitting beside the fire so I can toss the paper in fast if the guards kick in the door. Not when I have to burn it anyway once I’m done. Paper is expensive, too. If any of the revolutionaries ever found out that I buy paper just to destroy it, they’d know I’ve been dirtied with decadence. I might come to our meeting place only to find no one there, ever again. 

It’s happened before. Honeybadger told me that she thought Stoat had been dirtied. She said his questions in the meetings seemed suspicious, like the kind of thing someone might have prompted him to ask. She said we couldn’t risk having him around.

I still don’t know if we were right to get rid of him. Probably it was nothing. Honeybadger and I knew that. That’s why we didn’t consider killing him. We simply informed the others that we had changed the meeting place, and didn’t inform him. When the revolution comes, if Stoat is clean and bright, he can join us then.

Now I know that Honeybadger is analyzing every word we say when we meet. It makes me nervous every time I open my mouth. Do my questions seem planted? Are my ideas not clean enough for her?

If she came to believe that I was dirtied, she might think she had to kill me, just to be safe.

Yeah. I know she would. All else aside, I was the one who recruited her. I know her true name.

Maybe I should tell the others that the meeting place has changed, and not tell her. I’ll cut her out, like we cut Stoat out. 

If she turns on us, she won’t have much to reveal. I know her name, but she doesn’t know mine. All she’d have is a location that’s no longer used, and the code names of a few people in masks. 

She doesn’t know I’ve infiltrated the palace. No one does. It’s safer that way. When I’ve gathered as much information as I can, I’ll give it to Dragon. Even if my entire cell has been dirtied, he’s not in it, so he should be clean. Anyway, I know I can trust him.

I think I can trust him.

On second thought, there's no point getting rid of Honeybadger. It would only make the others suspicious, so soon after we cut out Stoat, and then someone else would take Honeybadger's place. Watching. Listening. Plotting. At least Honeybadger knows if she comes to me with her doubts about others, I'll listen. With luck she'll be too busy suspecting others to suspect me. 

I was so happy when I started. At last, I didn’t have to clench my teeth and endure—I was getting a chance to actually do something! We were going to burn down this filthy society, and build a better one from its ashes. And I was going to be one of the people striking the match.

That’s why I called myself Redbird. It would have been Phoenix, but when Dragon recruited me and told me how to start my own cell, he said not to use mythical creature code names. When I asked why not, he laughed and said it was because he was Dragon and from then on, that’s what I should call him. I asked if woodland creatures was all right, and he said sure but not to use really common ones like Deer or Mouse. So I guess there’s at least two other cells, one Dragon’s and one Deer’s or Mouse’s.

Redbirds aren’t common. Every time you see one, a flash of flame between the trees, the brilliance nearly makes your heart stop. It does that to me, anyway.

In the beginning, I loved it all—the code names, the discussions going late into the night, the planning, the danger. The revolutionaries felt closer than my own filthy family ever had—closer than the family I used to imagine for myself had. I thought we would always show each other our true faces.

Now we’re gnawing at each other like rats in a bucket, waiting to be drowned. 

When I reveal how I got into the palace, I’m sure they’ll think it’s humiliating and terrifying for me to bow and scrape to those filth who’re soiling our lives, all the while knowing that if I get found out, I’ll have to try to kill myself quick before they can torture me. 

The truth is, I like it. The truth is, it’s less tense than the rest of my life. While a part of me is watching and listening, most of me can sink into my role, where my biggest worry is displeasing the princess and my greatest joy is getting the honor of painting her royal nails. 

It’s so strange to be with someone who doesn’t speak. And the elaborate facepaint of the royals isn’t like what regular people wear, to enhance our features. It hides their faces like a mask. I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her barefaced on the street. 

I can’t hear her voice and I can’t see her face. It makes me pay very close attention to her body and the way she moves. Her hands, especially. I would have expected her fingers to be very long and her hands very narrow, the better to sign with, but she has little plump hands and stubby fingers. 

They do move gracefully, though. Her signs to the other handmaidens are often too fast for me to read, but she slows them down when she’s signing for me. They seem to stroke the air. And when I take her hand in mine to buff or paint her nails, her skin is incredibly soft. I’ve never touched anything like it, not even the silk of her robes.

I wish I could hear Princess Karian’s voice. 

I’ll burn this now.

 

**I have fallen in with revolutionaries.**

It is quite ironic. Years ago, when I first began to slip outside the palace, barefaced and in commoners’ clothes, I had girlish dreams of uncovering plots of revolution and saving my land. 

Of course, I never discovered any such thing, even when I clumsily started conversations about how terrible my mother was. People gave me strange looks and walked away. Eventually I gave up. But by that time I had acquired a taste for common things: warm flatbread spread with salted butter and soft raw sugar, sweet unfiltered liquor that must be stirred into a thick white cloud before it's drunk, speaking casually and aloud.

Perhaps I had also acquired a taste for not being myself.

For the last several months, I have been chatting in a tea house with a woman named Neliam. One day when I was angry with my mother for giving my sister a larger and more perfect black pearl than the one she gave to me, Neliam made some vague mention of the queen in a tone of displeasure. I agreed and built upon her remark, adding that she was selfish and cruel. 

Over the months, we continued speaking of the queen in hushed voices, huddled over cups of the smoky tea that commoners drink. I was amused by how excited my younger self would have been by those conversations, imagining that at any moment, she would be invited to join a revolutionary cell.

And then I was invited to join a revolutionary cell. It was all I could do not to laugh.

I have attended meetings for a month now, and I am still uncertain of how much of a risk these would-be revolutionaries truly are. I could have told my mother—perhaps I should have already done so—but once I do, she will round them up and execute them all, and then there will be no way to uncover the larger conspiracy. I think it is better to wait until I have gathered more information.

I confess, it is very exciting. They all have code names. Neliam is Honeybadger. The others are Gecko, Shrew, Jackal, Gull, and Redbird. I am Wasp. I chose my own name, saying that you often do not even notice a wasp is there before it stings you. Perhaps I am too much in love with irony, but they all seemed to think it was a very fine name.

Redbird is the leader. Her mask is a plain black cloth tied across her face, with ragged slashes for eyes and mouth. Her eyes gleam from the darkness. She speaks very eloquently, of justice and equality, injustice and brutality, and the glorious new world that will rise, clean and bright and shining, from the ashes of the old. I enjoy the sound of her voice. 

I will miss it when she is dead.

 

**Some days I feel older than my mother.**

Today was one of those days. 

At the end of each meeting, when we say, “To the revolution!” and strike our hearts, Wasp hits her chest hard enough to bruise. I did too, once. It felt good to remind myself how willing I was to endure pain and injury for the sake of a better world to come. Now, I’ve perfected the art of hitting exactly hard to enough to make a thump without hurting myself at all.

Wasp seems so young and innocent. She hangs on my every word, and is always asking when we will join with the other cells and bring down the cruel world we live in. I think she must come from some pampered background, for her clothes and mask, while not fine, are never dirty or tattered. That would explain how surprised she seems at every instance of injustice I recount. She has not experienced oppression herself, only witnessed it. 

Is it wrong of me to wonder whether she has joined from compassion, or from a childish desire for excitement? Perhaps I see so much of myself in her that I am imagining that she must be as I once was. I too wrapped myself from head to toe when I began, wearing not only a mask, but also gloves—as if anyone could identify me by my hands alone. Every time I see her little black-covered hands, I have to suppress a smile.

I do still believe in a better world. The shine may have worn off the trappings of the revolution, but maybe that just means I’ve grown up. Code words and masks and secret salutes are fun for children, but tedious necessities for adults. 

Justice. Equality. Shared wealth. The republic. Now those are words that still shine like gold, untarnished, pure, clean. 

My association with the princess isn’t dirtying me. I haven’t touched her. Not ~~like I want to~~ in a sexual way. Show me the person who’s never had inappropriate thoughts, and I’ll show you a child who hasn’t figured out what the button in her cunt is for. 

It’s only because she’s so beautiful, with her full-moon body and arrogant eyes. I can’t help it if my body responds. It doesn’t mean anything. 

I’ll burn this now.

 

**There is a reason for my silence.**

It is not the one we are told, perhaps. Voices are powerful. If I was to speak aloud, who can say what changes my voice might create?

Redbird’s voice is powerful. I listen, thinking only to mine her words for information that might lead me to the heart of her conspiracy. I listen, thinking only that I like its sound. And I find myself hearing the sense of it, despite myself.

It is true, what she says about my mother. I have seen it myself. She is cruel, and cold, and quick to order death. 

It is true that I live in unearned luxury while others, who work very hard, can barely afford to feed themselves. 

When I sit and listen in the tea houses, I hear people speak of family members who died because they could not afford medicine, of taxes so punitive that people lose their homes, of sons and daughters drafted into bloody wars waged to increase the fortunes of the royal house. All this is true.

Redbird speaks, and I believe. 

I do not know what to do. I cannot be a princess and a revolutionary. I must end it. 

I cannot

Why must I

 ~~I let the handmaiden fuck me.~~

~~I made the handmaiden fuck me.~~

~~The handmaiden fucked me.~~

The handmaiden and I fucked. 

I put aside my writing materials, hid my diary, and rang the bell for my handmaidens. When they came in, I dismissed the others, saying I was weary and wished only her to stay to sing me to sleep. When they were all gone, she stood looking at me with her bright eyes. 

The air between us was like my own skin. Every time she moved, I could feel it. 

I felt it in the air when her chest expanded and her head tilted back. It was the kind of deep breath that says, _I have been waiting,_ and _yes, now._

Her hands were already at the closures of her robe before I signed to her to undress. 

I was right. Beneath the robes, she is a waning gibbous moon. The bones of her hips are slim but the flesh is softly padded. She has a little round belly and breasts that fill my hands. Her nipples are brown as chestnuts. 

I signed to her to kneel. She sank to her knees. I unhooked my bell skirt and stepped out of it, and discarded my nether garments. Then I stood before her in my long-sleeved blouse and corset, my hair still in the intricate upswept braids the handmaiden had arranged earlier in the morning and my golden crown firm upon my head, naked from the waist down. 

She needed no sign to edge forward on her knees to lick ~~my golden cleft~~ my cunt. Her tongue was so hot. I gripped her shoulders. I liked the strength of my own fingers, how they sank into her soft flesh, how I pressed down harder and harder as she brought me closer to the brink. When I came, she was the one who cried out.

The handmaiden started to move away then, but I held her in place. Then I tugged her to her feet. I kept one hand on her shoulder while I used the other to toy with her hardening nipples and her slippery cunt. Every time I touched her, it was like I was breathing into a flute. Her soft cries and gasps and breaths made me wet again. She put a finger into me, and I came again before she did. 

When I released her I saw red streaks on her shoulders, the imprints of me on her. I hope tomorrow I will see bruises, black as shadow on her skin. 

I remembered to ask, after. Her name is Hanar.

 

**What have I done?**

I’ve ruined everything. I’ve filthied it. 

Dragon told me the revolution was coming. He told me not to tell my cell just yet. Later, he said. When it’s too late to warn the filthy royals. Just in case one of your cell is dirty.

I didn’t want the princess to die. I knew it was wrong of me, but I didn’t. 

I had all these wild plans to warn her—just her—to smuggle herself out of the palace on some pretext. But what filthy pretext would convince her? The only thing I could think of was to try to coax her into meeting me for a tryst on that day, and then… I don’t know… tying her up or something until it was too late for her to warn anyone. 

As if the disappearance of the princess wouldn't tip off the queen that something huge was amiss. It was a stupid, dirty idea. All my ideas were stupid and dirty. 

I told myself that I didn’t know the princess. I told myself she was a filthy royal like the rest of the filthy royals, who fucked me without so much as asking my leave. 

Except she did ask my leave. She asked me with her eyes. With her silence. If I had turned away, she wouldn’t have clapped or rung the bell to make me see and obey. I’m sure of it.

Oh, I know what everyone would say if I told them that. Excellent, they’d say, she most likely wouldn’t have raped you, truly that makes her a wonderful person.

I don’t think she’s a wonderful person. 

I do think she’s a person. 

She’s a woman with a name and a cunt that gets wet when I touch her. She’s Karian who has little chubby fingers that fly through the air, who always saves me a peach because she once spotted me eyeing them on her plate, who has no true power while her mother is alive.

Was it so wrong of me that I didn’t want her to die?

At the end of our meeting, when Wasp was leaving, I beckoned to her to stay. 

I don’t know why I did it. I know I had nothing planned. I think I had some vague feeling that I’d talk to her, the purest and cleanest of all the revolutionaries, and be inspired to do the right thing. 

The door closed behind her. 

There was no air between us. There was only heat. 

I didn’t ask her leave. I already knew I had it. I pushed her up against the wall and put my hand up her skirt. She was slick and hot inside, and she kissed me through my mask. 

She was clumsy, like she’d never kissed anyone before. Well, she was young, I thought. Maybe she hadn’t. But when she shoved her hand down my pants and into my underwear, she fumbled at first, then started rubbing me just how I liked it. 

I was sweating. So was she. Everything felt slippery and hot. The air was like steam. I leaned my head against hers and panted. 

Her walls clenched around my fingers as she started to come. She had one hand in my hair, and she let go of it and grabbed my shoulder hard, so hard. I was still bruised from the princess. I’d been trying to be silent, but the air went out of my lungs and I heard myself make a sound like I was hurt as I came.

I knew her then. 

I knew her.

I’ll burn this now.

 

**It was her.**

The handmaiden. The revolutionary. Redbird. Hanar.

I jerked away from her, gasping, and ripped off her mask. But it didn’t show me anything I didn’t already know.

She shoved me back up against the wall, pinning me with one hand on my chest, and tore off my mask. I wasn’t wearing my facepaint but she knew me anyway. Like me, she had already figured it out.

She was so strong. I couldn’t do anything but stare at her and quiver. 

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked.

“I should.” Those eyes, like a cat’s. I was the mouse, dangling limp from her jaws. Her sharp teeth holding me so terribly gently. “If I let you go, you’ll have me killed. You’ll have all of us killed.”

I would have denied it if I thought she would believe me. “Tie me up and leave me here. Hide, or run for the border. By the time I get loose or someone finds me, you’ll be gone.”

She was silent for a long time. I had no idea how to read the darkness of her eyes. She was pressing the air from my lungs. Little sparks of light appeared and winked out, like fireflies. 

Then the pressure was gone. I slid down the wall until I was sitting ungracefully on the floor, gasping and dizzy.

She squatted on her heels. “The revolution is the day after tomorrow.”

“What?” I said, or tried to. The word was mangled as I caught my breath.

She nodded as if she understood. “The others won’t be told until it’s closer to the time. But I guess I have no choice but to tell you now. You hide or run for the border. I've already reported everything I learned from my months in the palace. If you're there when the revolution comes, there will be no escape.”

I stared at her. Surely she knew I had no need to flee, if she let me live. All I had to do was warn my mother, and there would be no revolution, but only an uprising, brief and brutally put down.

In a quick smooth motion, she got up and went out the door. I rushed to follow her, but found it bolted from the outside. I had to climb out the window. By the time I had done so, she was gone.

I am writing in my room. Everything in it seems suddenly precious: my books, my papers, my pens and ink, my silken sheets, my fresh flowers, my wall scrolls, my corsets, the box of paints for my face and nails. My crown. How could I ever imagine that I was willing to sacrifice it all—to sacrifice my entire life?

I wish I could call my handmaiden to comfort me. 

I should never have written anything about our meetings. Now there’s a record that I was in a revolutionary cell for months, and told no one. 

I will burn my diary now.

 

**We found each other afterward.**

The fires had been put out, but ash still fell from the sky in soft gray flakes, like hot snow. ~~The princess Wasp Karian~~ She was bareheaded, her hair cut short, in workclothes and boots. Like many others, she was headed for the border with a heavy pack on her back. So was I.

I was surprised that I could recognize her. Then I wasn’t surprised.

Maybe I’d always known her.

Maybe she’d always known me.

I could have pretended not to see her. Instead, I fell in step beside her. 

“Is this what you wanted?” she asked. Her tone surprised me. I’d have expected it to be accusing, but she only sounded curious.

“No,” I said, startled into honesty. “Yes. Well—it’s what I expected. I knew the revolution wouldn’t be bloodless. I knew there’d be refugees. I hadn’t expected to be one of them. The good part, the part I fought for, hasn’t happened yet. It’s too early. If I stayed, I’d get to see it.”

“Then why not stay?”

“I betrayed the revolution.”

“You did not," she said. "I never passed on your warning.”

I couldn’t believe it. But it had to be true. ~~They’d~~ We’d won.

“Why not?” I asked, quietly. Then I caught myself yelling so loud I hurt my throat. “Not for me!”

“No.” She shook her head, slowly, and went on shaking it until I knew she was showing me her true face. “Not for you. For the revolution.”

“You’re joking!” I was shouting again. 

She gestured for me to lower my voice. There were others on the streets, all in sturdy shoes, all weighted down with packs stuffed much too full. None of them were listening. They were carrying babies. There was blood in the gutters.

“To the revolution,” she said, softly but with fervor, and struck her heart hard enough to bruise. 

That, too, was her true face.

Maybe she’d never showed me anything but her true face. Maybe it took me this long to see it. 

“I still betrayed it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter why, or that it didn’t have the consequences I expected. I can’t drink wine I tried to foul. You’re the one who should stay. ”

“Someone would find me out, eventually. The palace has been looted. My mother had a portrait of me on her bedroom wall, with my face bare.” She looked down, at the ash and the blood. “I was willing to sacrifice my family. I was willing to sacrifice my position. But I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life. I’m still unwilling. I can never drink the wine either.”

Then she looked up at me. I don’t know why but I suddenly remembered the taste of her, like a peach just starting to ripen. 

“What’s your name?” she asked. “Your true name.”

“Ketiar,” I said. My name felt strange in my own mouth. Was I really Ketiar, not Hanar or Redbird? Was I all of them? Was I none? “Keti for short.”

“Do you prefer Keti?”

“Yes.” Then I confessed, “I just made it up now. It’s not a real nickname, you know. People call me Tiar, or Tiaren. I mean, they used to.”

“If we travel far enough, no one will know how our names should be changed. I could be Kari, I suppose.”

“You hate that. I can hear it.”

She said, “I could be Rianan. No one ever called me that.” After a moment, she added, “I always wished someone would.”

I thought about it, then said, “I don’t see why not. If anyone asks what the full name is, you can always say it’s Sarian or Hallarian or something. And like you say, where we’re going, probably no one will even know to ask.”

We walked on, heading for the border. 

“Rianan?” I said after a while.

“Yes?”

“I love your voice.”


End file.
